Halo: Survival of the Fittest
by Spark-308
Summary: Making this up as I go, hope it turns out good. I'll put in a summary when I finish it. ;D Please R&R!
1. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1_

1946 hours, March 15, 2546 (Military Calendar), Planet Agrestis.

"I've got SPARTANs on the ground!" Captain Numan stared at the incoming plasma bolts from the Covenant war ship as they hit the hull of the UNSC_ Applebee_. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Lets move Spartans! To the extraction point! Double time!" I barked, trying not to show any signs of pain to the rest of my team mates. The six Spartans ran northeast at top speed with me trailing behind. My Heads Up display filled with static every every time I got hit by that got close to the breach in my MJIOLNIR armor. I didn't dare to stop and patch myself up. Nor did anybody else who's vital signs are out of the ordinary. Captain Numan's instructions were clear: get their asses back to the Pelican. My HUD flashed a warning about the breach in my armor and then…everything went black.

Once… twice… I opened my eyes and found Vanessa. One of team Saber's members. "Hey…" Vanessa's voice was distorted and twisted in my ears. Shaking my eardrums until it felt like they burst. Vanessa grabbed my shoulders and hefted my arm around her neck. "We have to keep going!" Vanessa grunted as she pulled me along. I lifted my head off of Vanessa's shoulder and found my HUD flashing with a mission reminder. "GET TO EXTRACTION POINT." I came too and detached my limp body from Vanessa's and ran. Ran into the distance. Ran anywhere but there. I just knew I had orders to get out of the battle field. My biomonitors flashed along with my mission updates which, combined, could cause seizures; but I saw through it. My loss of blood made my limbs go numb and tried to make my eyes black out. The only thing I could feel now was the heat trapped inside of my armor. One more click; through the bushes and over the river. I could make it. I just had to run faster.

The static-filled COM channels tried to come through my busted helmet speakers. One was totaled and the other lost a few wires; causing the volume to be extremely low. It popped in my ear loud enough to cause a major headache then shut off permanently.

I ran and broke through the thick underbrush of one of Agrestis' dry and dying forests. A new mission update came through, flashed on my HUD and caused me to trip over a large, fallen tree trunk that sent me falling towards the ground. Everything played in slow motion. All the way to the ground. Until I hit land head down. Hard. The impact knocked all the breath out of my chest and blood, I didn't know were from, covered the inside of my faceplate. Vanessa slid to a stop again. "Damn it, Spark." she grabbed my by the arms and stood me up on solid ground, pushing me forward toward the EZ. "I'm fine." I tried to convince her by starting a slow jog along her side.

Through the bushes. Now, over the river. Pelican-093 was in sight and the engines growled as if greeting them. I was the first one to get to the river; starting the line of Spartans at the river's edge. "Give me the bag." I demanded. Maurice tossed the duffle bag and looked back at the river. "Go. I'll catch up." I pointed to the Pelican as it began to rise above the ground. No warnings came up about any other breaches in anybody else's armor. They should be fine. "Dive!" I ordered as they hesitated to leave me behind with the bag. They dove and got to the other side in a matter of seconds. The river was too long to jump and deep enough to drown. Hannah, another member of team saber, was the first one out and up. "Toss me the bag!" Hannah yelled as she held out her hands dripping with water. I drew back and did an under throw; the bag making it to the other side. I dove as the others made it to the Pelican doors. Flint, a Spartan on my team, was in the door frame waiting for me. "Let's go, Spark. We're losing daylight." I dragged myself out of the water and pushed myself to run towards the Pelican. They were high enough that I had to jump to make it on there safely. They kept rising up, and up. Higher and higher. On the other side of the Pelican was a drop to hell. If I missed…

_No time for "If's"._ I said to myself. _I got a mission to finish. _I jumped. Sprung into the air with what little strength I had left.

Everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

I looked up. Flint. She caught me; right above the gap in the Earth's crust, the "drop to hell". "Nice jump," Derek walked over to us and grabbed my wrist. "Need a hand?" He pulled me up, walked me over to the bench and took off my helmet. "Captain wants to talk to you." I looked up at him as he handed me the earpiece.

"Didn't I tell you not to kill yourself out there?" Captain Numan asked with a little more ease in his voice.

"Yes, sir."

"You scared the hell out of me, you know that?"

"I do now."

"I need you to get your ass back up to this bridge. ASAP. You hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

I could still hear Captain Numan yelling commands to the crewmen on deck as the short distance COM slowly shut off and burst into static. I took out the ear piece and dropped my head to the wall of the Pelican as the pain from every wound on my body started to take over.

"Spark? What did you do to yourself?" Flint asked. "Saved your guys' asses, that's what." I replied. Flint found a few biofoam canisters and tossed them across the cabin to me. Internally, the bleeding stopped after the biofoam was injected, but the pain was still piercing underneath my skin.

Me, being branched from the Army, not the Navy like the others, gave us different ways of thinking. I would go right, and the rest of my team would go left. I'm not sure what all they taught them, but the one thing Officer Samson taught us was: Show no fear, have no pain. That was his secret to winning. I tried to sit up as straight as I could when I noticed team Saber looking in my direction from the other side of the Pelican. "So," I said, trying to start a conversation. "How many kills did you get?"

"What the hell?" the Pilot muttered. The forward screen flashed a warning signal for an incoming projectile; but the tracker read nothing. "Something's wrong." The co-pilot replied. "Something's wrong with the tracker." The Pelican swung to the right then plunged nose first towards the canyon. "I can't get control of the pilot controls!" A burst of electricity surged through the control panel and blew out most of the lights and screens. Sparks flew from knobs and buttons and sprinkled the panel with light. "The COMs are dead. We're going down! Spartans, get ready for a hard landing!" one of the pilots yelled.

The Spartans instinctively reached and grabbed onto something; which happened to be each other. The metal of the Pelican bent and squeaked as the machine rolled and begun to ark towards the ground.

For a second, I didn't feel pain. Just my stomach turn and my heart pump in my throat. "Everyone," I yelled. "Keep your armor locked." Flint looked at her HUD. "twenty hundred meters!" She paused. "I don't think we'll be able to get back in the air! We're gonna get grounded! There's no way we can slowdown. We're moving at terminal velocity." I looked up at Derek and then over at Saber team when I noticed my helmet rolling back and forth along the wall of the cockpit. I reached up to my head for confirmation. I could feel the strands of my slicked back hair. "Damn it."

The Pelican then tilted to a ninety degree angle towards the ground and accelerated fast. "Deploying emergency chutes!" the Pelican slowed, but not enough to guarantee survival. They all braced for impact.


End file.
